LIV
The Hope of a tottering and crumbling Empire was installed at the Prefecture of Rethel, a picturesque, old-world river-town of many bridges, and houses with quaint carved gables, slanting floors, and low ceilings crossed by heavy beams.
He had arrived late on the previous evening. There had been no flags, no bands, no popular ovation, no delirium of enthusiasm in greeting the Imperial heir. Press organs were now telling incredulous Parisians that in consideration of the Prince's weariness the people had foregone their privilege of welcome. In honest truth, the unlucky townsfolk were too sad and sick-hearted to cheer.
A great battle was impending in the neighborhood of Metz. The First and Second Armies of United Germany had crossed the Moselle, wheeled right-about-face, and were closing in on Bazaine, who had failed in his attempt to retire upon Châlons by the Verdun Road. The Prussian Crown Prince had come out of the Vosges, and was marching North instead of moving upon Châlons. If his vanguard clashed with MacMahon's patched-up Army there would be trouble.... Everyone expected trouble, the soil of France had been sown so thickly with the bad seed from which great national disasters spring, even before it had been plowed by German shells.... The coming tragedy chilled and numbed as the iceberg chills the senses of the passenger in the Atlantic liner's warm deck-cabin, long before the keel grates, and the white fog lifts, and shows the towering Death on which the doomed vessel is being hurled.
The deep dejection of the officers around the Heir Imperial could not be covered by any well-meant attempts at disguise. The rumors that came through the fog into which Bazaine had vanished were horribly disquieting. They waited upon thorns, for a telegram from the Emperor, conveying intelligence on which they might rely.
There was something in the situation of the lonely, proud young creature they surrounded that made the heart bleed as you looked at him. So helpless and yet so representative of unfettered Power, so ignorant in the ways of the world, and yet so conversant with its outward forms and ceremonies, so palpably the last frail link upon a chain that was being hacked through by the Prussian sword.
He had grown older and thinner since the days of July, and his fresh, fine color had faded to paleness. There was a frown upon the open forehead now, the gay, confident regard had changed to sullenness. The blue eyes were less lustrous. The silky chestnut hair was rumpled and duller. Care had overshadowed the boyish head with her heavy sable wing.
The arrival of the previous night had been sudden and unexpected, the startled authorities had been rarely put about to find fitting accommodation for their Emperor's son. This morning Monseigneur had been hurried out of his bed at the Prefecture to receive the apologies of the Prefect, an Imperialistic vine-grower, who had been absent in the interests of his affairs.
"Your Imperial Highness will be aware that this is a critical month with owners of vineyards. The vines have borne well and the grapes are ripening magnificently. Next month the champagne-making ought to be in full progress. But the lack of hands terribly hampers us.... Women cannot replace the men who are skilled in the various processes. And who knows——"
The Prefect broke off, for the Sub-Prefect had nudged him openly. Even if the tide of War should turn, and France be freed from her invaders, who knew whether any of those grape-pickers and sorters and pressers, Reservists and volunteers and conscripts who had been called out to carry the chassepot against the Prussians, would ever return to their countryside again? Who knew whether they would not be thrown as ripe grapes into Death's huge wine-press? Perhaps their red blood was foaming in the vat even now.
Who knew whether those rich, prosperous vineyards on the Aisne would not be trampled into sticky mashiness under the ruthless feet of Prussian Army Corps? If the rumors were correct, an advance upon Paris might take place at any moment. True, MacMahon's Army was said to be covering the road to the capital.
But MacMahon had been already beaten terribly.... Recollecting it, the Prefect shuddered in his well-polished shoes.
But he said his say and shook the young hand graciously offered him, and got out of his own wife's drawing-room as awkwardly as though he had been one of his own clerks. While the Sub-Prefect, a sharp-visaged little man, who combined the office of public notary with the trade of wool-stapler, trotted after him, very much at his ease.
"How you sweat! Wipe your head and your neck too," counseled the notary. "Otherwise your cravat will be a perfect wisp and Madame will certainly take you to task!"
"You have such sangfroid, my good M. Schlitte. I envy you; I do, positively!" stuttered the Prefect, puffing and blowing and mopping. "Royalty invariably dazzles me.... I tremble ... I blunder.... In a word, I make a fool of myself! At this moment I am tortured by the weight of my responsibilities.... True—His Highness is well guarded—true, the Army of Châlons is somewhere or other in the neighborhood!... But the daring of these Prussian horsemen ... the danger of a surprise!..."
"A surprise.... Nonsense, my dear sir. The thing is impossible!"
And M. Schlitte, who was said upon the strength of his queer French accent to be a native of Strasbourg, soothed the Prefect, and grinned like a rat-trap as he betook himself home. Inhabiting a riverside villa in the neighborhood, from which residence—we may suppose for the better conduct of his extensive business—a private telegraphic installation connected him with Rheims, Paris, Brussels, Luxembourg—and, when necessary, Berlin—it would have been possible to have made arrangements for that very contingency. His suggestions were not adopted at the Prussian Headquarters, but his zeal was approved in the right place. He became Prefect of Rethel a little later, when Berlin was settled at Versailles.
He stopped now, on his way back to his villa, to send the town-band round to the Place of the Prefecture and to bribe some loafers with small silver to mix with the crowd and cheer for the Emperor and the Prince. Consequently, a drum, trombone, cornet, and ophicleide shortly made their appearance before the Imperial lodgings.... La Reine Hortense and Partant Pour La Syrie entertained Monseigneur while he breakfasted. Since then he had thrice been summoned out upon the balcony to acknowledge the acclamations of the loyal populace of Rethel.
It was pouring rain, and the knots of spies, loafers, and genuine enthusiasts were sheltered by umbrellas. The very fowls that pecked between the cobbles had a listless and draggled air. The boy shivered as he turned from the dismal outdoor prospect to contemplate the Empire hangings, ormolu girandoles, and obsolete, scroll-backed chairs and claw-foot tables, gracing the Prefect's wife's reception-room. He told himself that it was horrible, even when one waited for the news of certain victory, to be shut up in a beastly hole like this.
He nearly jumped for joy when the name of M. de Straz was brought him by his equerry. He remembered the Roumanian agent, who had previously been presented to him.
"Pray bring him quickly, M. le Comte," he said eagerly to M. d'Aure, who had replaced old M. Bachon. "It is possible that he may bring a message from the Emperor."
He colored, and his eyes regained a little of their old brightness. The green-and-gold equerry, who loved him, as did every member of his household, was glad to see him, interested, for more reasons than one.
Straz, known to be a secret agent of the Emperor, and hailing from Rheims, where his employer was now—Straz might well amuse the Prince while his protectors waited for an Imperial telegram. Meanwhile, the bodyguard about the Prefecture was unostentatiously doubled, the carriages and the baggage were secretly held in readiness for a move.
You can imagine Straz, with his profile and beard of a courtier of old Nineveh, bowing over the boyish hand, and rolling his jet-black, glittering eyes. He had looked better in his Astrachan-trimmed traveling jacket than in the tight-waisted, closely buttoned, black frock-coat and pearl-gray trousers of ceremony, and the inky river of black silk cravat that flowed over the expanse of white shirt-front now covering his Herculean chest.
He wore white spats, which made his short legs appear shorter. A bouquet adorned his buttonhole—pink carnation and tuberose. Its cloying fragrance hung heavily on the damp air of the Prefecture reception-room, as the boy pleasantly said:
"Good-day, M. de Straz; do you come to us from the Emperor?"
"Yes, my Prince, and no!..." Straz had long ago got rid of his cold, yet a certain thickness characterized his consonants. He shrugged his great shoulders and smiled, showing his dazzling double curves of solid human ivory. "I come from Rheims, where His Imperial Majesty is making history.... I am not charged with any message from him!"
The boy's face fell. He said, with a brave effort to conquer his disappointment: "I am impatient, Monsieur, for news of another victory. It is so long since the engagement of Saarbrück, and that was only a little one. You are an officer in the Army of Roumania, you have told me. You are aware, even better than I, that military plans take time to develop .. and that Papa has every confidence in the generalship of M. de Bazaine.... If I were five or six years older, I should be admitted to the Councils of the Imperial État Major.... I should understand the reasons for these changes which puzzle me.... But one thing I should like to ask..." He flushed and glanced round nervously. "They do not believe in Paris or London that we are being ... beaten?... I beg of you to answer me candidly!"
Straz drew himself up dramatically, expanding his huge chest, and curling his parted mustache. His fierce black eyes, staring from their great curved arches, glittered like balls of polished jet....
"They do not, my Prince! They wait for the Star of the Bonapartes to rise resplendent from a sea of gore shed from Prussian veins.... They wait, as the world waits, for the Empire to emerge more glorious than ever from this conflict, which will restore to her forever her lost Provinces of the Rhine. It may be that the Coronation of Napoleon IV. will be solemnized in the Cathedral of Cologne.... Aha, my Prince, have I won a smile at last?"
He looked, despite the frock-coat, more than ever like some ancient warrior of Assyria, marching in a carved and painted procession along the walls of some unearthed palace of Nineveh or Babylon. And so admirable an actor was he that the sick heart of the boy now warmed at his simulated fire, and gladdened at his deceptive words of hope.
"I had pictured my Imperial Prince," he went on, "in brighter and less gloomy surroundings, with sympathetic and delightful companions to alleviate his exile from home."
He had touched the wrong chord. The slender, well-made figure was drawn up proudly. The delicate brows frowned, the lips quivered as the boy said:
"Monsieur, it is not 'exile' when an officer is ordered on Active Service.... And I am with the French Army, whose uniform I wear. For the moment the Emperor, my commanding officer, has ordered me to remain here.... I did wrong to grumble—I shall do so no more!"
Straz grinned and bowed to cover his momentary confusion. Why had he used the indigestible word? He touched his buttonhole bouquet and said with a treacly inflection:
"There are no violets—it is not the proper season.... Does Monseigneur remember when the purple blooms reached him regularly at intervals, one timid scrap of paper hiding among the slender stems? ... And would he, did he know how the sender languished for news of him—entrust me with one penciled message of kindness that might restore the rose to a fading cheek?"
The clear-eyed, fresh face of the boy he harangued underwent several changes during this windy apostrophe. For one brief instant it flushed and brightened eagerly, then it frowned with perplexity, then it twitched with the evident desire to laugh.
He said, controlling his amusement with his grace of good-breeding:
"Monsieur, if it was a lady who sent me those violets, pray tell her that she was very good to do so, and that I thank her very much. And since she asks for a message—perhaps this will do as well?"
He turned to the writing-table, where some sheets, covered with clever pen-and-ink caricatures, lay on the blotter, and took up a rough little outline drawing of a landscape, marked with lines of dots and written over with notes. He said ingenuously, offering this to the Roumanian:
"See, Monsieur, this is a mere sketch of the affair at Saarbrück. I did it to send my tutor at Paris, but M. Filon shall have another one.... If the lady has sons of my age, no doubt they will be able to draw far better. Nevertheless, here it is!"
Under the date of August 2nd, he had signed it, with a touch of boyish vanity:
"Under fire for the first time.
"Your affectionate
"Louis Napoleon."
"What genius!—what a gift! How gracious an act of kindness on the part of your Imperial Highness!"
Straz grabbed the little scrawl eagerly, pressed his moist scarlet lips to it with theatrical devotion—made a tremendous flourish of putting it away in a pocketbook, and bestowing this receptacle near the region of his heart.
"Though the lady has no sons—she is not even yet married," he hinted. "Dare I confide a secret to Monseigneur?—she is a young and beautiful girl!"
Monseigneur had been promising himself to caricature Straz at the next opportunity, not forgetting to make the most of his profile, hair, and beard. Young and beautiful girls were no novelties to Louis Napoleon, accustomed to do the honors of Versailles and Saint Cloud to the muslin-clad daughters of the sparkling coquettes who frequented the Imperial Circle. He began, struggling with the boredom that began to oppress him:
"If the young girl is your fiancée, Monsieur, or your daughter——"
The speaker broke off at the sound of hoofs and wheels on the cobblestones of the Place, the bump of a carriage-step let down, hitting the curb before the Prefecture.... Someone had arrived with a message from the Emperor; or perhaps it was only the Prefect's wife returning from an airing.... Straz would have been other than himself had he failed to seize the opportunity.
"Monseigneur, Mademoiselle de Bayard is not affianced. She has hitherto declined all alliances proposed as advantageous—it is said her affections are secretly engaged!..."
His smirk revolted even while it fascinated. He said, rolling his glistening black eyes about the apartment—shrugging his great shoulders, laying a thick white squat-nailed finger mysteriously against his carmine lips:
"Engaged since a little rencontre that took place in the month of January.... There were disturbances in Paris—which the troops had been called out to quell. Riding with M. de Frossard in the Avenues of the Champs Élysées, your Highness passed close by a young girl in a cab. She cried out, 'Vive le Prince Impérial!' ... She threw a knot of violets, which struck your horse on the shoulder.... You had the flowers in your hand, Monseigneur, when you rode away."
"Ah, now I remember!" The boy's blush became him. "Or I should say I have not forgotten. And where is she now, Monsieur?"
"Where is Mademoiselle de Bayard? Your Imperial Highness would like to know?"
Straz, who had thrilled with a sportsman's joy at the curtsey of the float betokening a nibble, would have given his soul to know himself.... Now, as he delayed, with the air of one who momentarily holds back something eagerly waited for, the equerry knocked and entered, approached and whispered to the Prince.